Monk Gutted To Miss Derby But Team Comes First

Garry Monk felt he had to pull out of Saturday's derby match against Cardiff City for the team's sake.

The captain was obviously desperate to feature in such a hugely important game in front of his home fans but he suffered a recurrence of an ankle injury just before kick off, and rather than trying to play through it, thinking he could cost his team-mates a goal, he pulled out, putting his team's interests before his own - excellent attitude from the captain if you ask me.

Monk said:

'I have been carrying the calf problem for a while, but managed to get through the game at Scunthorpe last week,''

'It felt fine in training during the build up to the Cardiff game and I didn't think there was going to be a problem, especially with the international break coming up to fully recover.

'But I felt the calf really tighten up during the warm up before the game. I had to make a decision. I could have tried to run it off or risk coming off after 15 or 20 minutes; by which time I could have given a goal away.

'In the end there was only one thing to do; I had to put the team first and pull out altogether.

'I was gutted not to be part of it, but the team comes first and, while it was hard to watch the game from the sidelines, I was absolutely overjoyed to see the boys come away with the victory.

'The spirit they showed, especially when Cardiff came back to 2-2, was tremendous. It made me very proud.''